Applied Cognitive Psychology最新文献

False balance arises when opposing viewpoints about a scientific issue are portrayed as more evenly matched than what the empirical evidence demonstrates. We examined the extent to which partition dependence is the psychological mechanism underlying the false balance effect. Participants (N = 360) read a statement about an interrogation practice (i.e., the use of false evidence ploys) that reached expert consensus, viewed data about the level of the expert consensus, and then assigned randomly to view (a) balanced expert comments in equal proportion on each side (3:3), (b) two-sided comments with more consensus views (5:1), (c) two-sided comments with more contrarian views (1:5), or (d) no comments at all. Results showed that balanced comments distorted perceived expert consensus and that two-sided comments with more consensus views had the largest impact on debiasing perceived expert consensus. We discuss the implications of our findings for science communication efforts.

Relationship satisfaction is closely tied to various characteristics of recollected past events within romantic relationships. However, our understanding of how distinct characteristics of these memories, individually and collectively are related to satisfaction remains limited. This study aimed to explore the associations between these characteristics and examine their role in relationship satisfaction. Participants recalled two memories from their relationships and rated the memory characteristics. The results revealed relationships between event characteristics and both rehearsal and recollection. Yet, rehearsal did not mediate the relationship between event characteristics and recollection. When relationship satisfaction was incorporated into the model, negative events marked by high emotion and personal significance, were related to increased rehearsal frequency, which in turn was associated with lower relationship satisfaction. However, personally significant negative events also enhanced recollective features, which heightened relationship satisfaction. These findings highlight the crucial role of relationship memories in relationship satisfaction, especially for the negative events.

The accurate detection of children's truthful and dishonest reports is essential as children can serve as important providers of information. Research using automated facial coding and machine learning found that children who were asked to lie about an event were more likely to look surprised when hearing the first question during an interview about said event. The present studies explored if humans can be trained to look for surprised expressions to detect children's deception. Participants made lie-detection judgments after seeing children's expressions in very brief clips. In Study 1, we compared performance across a training condition and control condition, and in Study 2 we modified the training. With training, adults could detect children's lies at above-chance levels by viewing their facial expressions. Detection accuracy was further improved with modified training (Study 2), but participants held a consistent lie bias. Challenges with using facial expressions to detect deceit are discussed.

Exposure to false information has the potential to impact how people encode subsequent, factual information that is related to the false information. In the current study, we propose an experiment in which participants read a true or false article about the relationship between the strictness of gun laws and gun violence in each state of the U.S. Afterward, stories of actual shootings are shown to participants. Half of the stories have details that are consistent with the false news article, and half of the stories have details that are consistent with the true news article. Following a brief distractor task, participants are asked to recall as much as they can about each story. We hypothesize that details that are consistent with the conclusion of the previously-read article will be remembered better than inconsistent details.

Few studies have explored ageing through the prism of an embodied and situated approach to cognition. Due to its sensorimotor and cognitive components, crossing the street is a good paradigm to tackle this issue. Using an experimental approach, an ageing simulation suit was used to disentangle cognition from its sensorimotor context in 29 young participants compared to 28 young participants and 22 older participants who did not wear the suit. Over three blocks of 34 trials, participants crossed a two-way street in a virtual reality platform. Their visual, auditory and cognitive performances were evaluated. Results showed sensorimotor decreases but no cognitive declines for participants wearing the suit. Interestingly, overall street-crossing performances were altered with the sensorimotor impairments provoked by real as well as simulated ageing. These findings help address the links between sensorimotor and cognitive declines in ageing and demonstrate the relevance of using the GERT suit to simulate ageing.

In recent years increased interest towards the growth of political polarisation in many Western countries has focussed on extreme conservative views. However, less is known about ideologies on the opposing end of the spectrum that may also lead to antisocial activist behaviour and suppression of dissenting viewpoints. This study aimed to explore the factors associated with these beliefs with a particular focus on postmodern beliefs and the role of psychological distress as predictors of what has been termed left-wing authoritarianism. A total of 365 participants completed measures of ideological beliefs, left-wing authoritarianism and psychological distress. The study found that postmodern beliefs and distress predicted left-wing authoritarianism. Contrary to expectations, the effect of postmodernism on left-wing authoritarianism was stronger when distress was low. Future studies could extend these findings through a greater focus on other potential influences, and the possible moderating role these have on belief development.

Previous fluency research has demonstrated that when messages are heard in degraded audio quality, the speaker and the content they are communicating are judged more negatively than when heard in high quality. Using a virtual court paradigm, we investigated the efficacy of two different instructions to reduce the technology-based bias—highlighting (1) the source responsible for audio quality (Experiment 1) and (2) variations in audio quality (Experiment 2). Results converged in showing that when instructions were provided prior to listening to recordings, people continued to evaluate speakers presented in low quality more negatively than those in high quality. However, results from Experiment 2 suggested that instructions provided after recordings may be effective and warrant further investigation. Given the digital divide and disproportionate impact of digital disruptions, these findings raise concerns about equity in high stakes environments such as remote justice.

When people remember together, what one person says can affect what others report. The size of this effect is dependent on the characteristics of the people and how they express their beliefs. The power relationship among people affects much of their social cognition, including the size of this memory conformity effect. Some research has shown people conform more to high power individuals, but other research shows the opposite. The current research identified what we believe is an important difference in these studies in the type of power that was manipulated: evaluative versus managerial power. We manipulated both of these types of power. For both of these types, the low power individual was more influenced than the high power person. The study was designed to be like how people learn new vocabulary in an educational context. More research should take into account that people learn from other people in educational settings.